Chinese Vice Minister of Education to Visit Bryant Sunday

Ping Hao, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, will visit Bryant University Sunday to tour the future site of a reconstruction of the Shu Fang Zhai, a section of the Forbidden City.

Hao is part of a 30-member delegation from China's Ministry of Education and the Consulate General that will meet privately with Governor Lincoln Chafee, US Senator Jack Reed and Bryant President Ronald Machtley at Bryant April 7.

On Nov. 8, Machtley led a delegation that met with leaders of China’s Palace Museum, where they planned a three-year collaboration to recreate the Shu Fang Zhai on Bryant's campus.

“The Shu Fang Zhai at Bryant will serve as an iconic visual and functional cultural heritage site for the exchange of ideas and academic programs. It will become a unique and integrated facility for the expansion of future Bryant Chinese programs,” said Machtley.

Ground-breaking on the project, originally scheduled for spring 2013, has been pushed back to the summer/fall of this year.

The recreation will be built using 1400s tecniques in China, broken down, put into containers and shipped to Bryant, where it will be reassembled. It's first time the Chinese government has allowed a section of the Forbidden City to be replicated and reconstructed outside China. Machtley first announced the project in May 2008 at a ceremony attended by former President George H.W. Bush.

The finished facility will house Bryant’s Confucius Institute and U.S.-China Institute as well as an educational center for Chinese language, culture and history. The recreation and its programs are expected to attract scholars and executives from across the country and around the world.